Building a straw bale house

We are looking to retro fit an existing victorian terraced house. But the video below takes tells you how to build an environmentally friendly straw bale house. Not such an unusual idea when you consider that many old buildings e.g. from the 16th century and older, were built with straw and animal manure.

Steering Group Meeting

Our Steering Group met this morning. The Steering Group consists of two Partnership Council staff members, a Nottingham Trent lecturer, a student on a course looking at sustainable built environments, a volunteer who works as a historic buildings advisor, a volunteer very involved in Transition Towns and a volunteer very involved in environmental issues.

We talked about what we will do to obtain an Eco House – applying for funding, talking to private landlords and Housing Associations. We agreed a job description for an Eco House Co-ordinator and to set up a blog and a wiki.

We all have lots of work to do now before the next meeting in December.

Summary of Project

This project will demonstrate environmental DIY and improvements that can be made to a terraced house to reduce carbon footprint and thus save money and reduce fuel poverty.

The eco house will also provide practical support for people to implement environmental measures in their own homes including helping people to apply for grants and teaching them environmental DIY.

In addition a number of environmental projects would be run from the eco house such as a freecycle shop that would reduce the environmental impact of consumerism and help people to save money.

The Eco House aims are:

1. To provide information and support to enable people to make their house more environmentally friendly
2. To provide information and support to reduce the negative environmental impact of people’s lives
3. To test traditional and ‘folk’ remedy solutions to modern energy and environmental problems
4. To demonstrate affordable environmental economies for people on low income.
5. To explore environmental projects and ideas that will save people money.

Welcome

Welcome to the Nottingham Eco House blog. The Nottingham Eco House is a new environmental project being set up by the local charity the Partnership Council in partnership with Nottingham Trent University and lots of volunteers.